What is a carb, anyway?

The food group known as carbohydrates divides into simple carbohydrates, or sugars, and complex carbohydrates (starches and fibers), which are  chains of sugars. “Think of sugars as bricks, starches as a line of bricks cemented together and fibers as brick walls,”  says Dr. Stephen Cunnane, Canada Research Chair at the University of Sherbrooke.

Carbohydrates include bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, biscuits and pies. Legumes such as lentils, kidney, beans and  chickpeas contain both carbs and protein. The body converts carbohydrates into glucose – the metabolic currency for energy. The glucose in your blood prompts your pancreas to release insulin, and the insulin, in turn, helps transport glucose from your bloodstream into your cells.

“Glucose helps ‘coil the spring’ of a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is essentially a packet of energy,” explains Cunnane. If you have all the ATP you need to meet your energy requirements, your body converts the excess glucose into fatty acids, which “get sent off to fat cells, where they remain stored as reserves of energy, to be used as needed.” The process is healthy as long as you’re not storing up too much this energy.

Are there “good” & “bad” carbs?

Traditionally, starches (think bread or rise) were considered “good” because they take longer to digest than the simple sugars in sweets – the so-called “bad” sugars. But more recent research research has shown that certain starches, such as those you find in processed breads and most commercial breakfast cereals, offer little nutritional advantage over simple sugars.

 “Our bodies convert these starches to glucose at such high speed that, in terms of the ‘sugar high’ you get from them, you may as well be eating pure sugar,” says Dr Thomas Wolever. He adds, you should never assume that “wholemeal” means unprocessed. Instead, he recommends, “look for bread that contains whole grains.”

Diabetes Mellitus is a condition where the body is unable to process glucose (a form of sugar).

The most prevalent form of Diabetes is Type II Diabetes which occurs mainly in adults. You are at risk from this form of diabetes if you have a generic predisposition to it (i.e. it’s in your family history), if you are overweight, and/or are aged over 40. In Type II Diabetes, the pancreas still creates insulin, but not enough, - or the insulin does not function correctly (insulin resistance). This form of Diabetes can be managed (to some degree) with the right diet and exercise, but also with diabetes

Diet Plan for the Diabetic

A healthy eating plan for a Diabetic person is a traditional low fat diet. This diet would have a ration of 25-30% fats, 50-55% carbs, and 20% protein. This is the kind of diet that most governmental authorities recommend.